November 6, 2009

I'm reading the stories this morning that attempt to give some depth of insight into Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood murderer/psychiatrist. There's this in the Washington Post:

In an interview, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and had sought for several years to be discharged from the military.

"I know what that is like," she said. "Some people can take it, and some cannot. He had listened to all of that, and he wanted out of the military, and they would not let him leave even after he offered to repay" for his medical training....

[Hasan] once said that "Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor" and that the United States shouldn't be fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place, according to an interview with Col. Terry Lee, a co-worker...

Lee told Fox News that Hasan "was hoping that President Obama would pull troops out.... When things weren't going that way, he became more agitated, more frustrated with the conflicts over there. . . . He made his views well known about how he felt about the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan."

And when he talked about fighting "the aggressor," he said that his fellow soldiers "should stand up and help the armed forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan," Lee said.

How was it that the military trained and employed this man in psychiatry and did not perceive his deep problems? I think that part of psychiatric training involves subjecting the would-be psychiatrist to psychological analysis. Why did this man slip through the system? His job was to treat others, in an environment full of experts in the field of psychiatry. Why did he remain an insider if he was the sort of person who could do what he eventually did? These are serious questions, not adequately answered by the idea that people "snap."

I want to know why what was wrong with Hasan was not detected? Was he given a pass because he was Muslim? Is there a fear of suspecting or offending Muslims in the military that keeps people who should see signs of dysfunction from acknowledging what they see or doing anything about it? On the other hand, if it really is the case that people in the military are harassing Muslims, that too should not be ignored. There should be rigorous equality for Muslims. It shouldn't even be necessary to point out what is obvious: Muslims in the military shouldn't experience special treatment either of a positive or a negative kind.

Let us not, out of sympathy for the victims, shy away from examining the military's failings. This should not have happened, and the sphere of responsibility extends beyond the murderer. This is not an expression of sympathy for Hasan. It is a desire for an effective military.

In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, a base spokesman, was asked about reports that Major Hasan had yelled “Allahu Akbar” — an Arabic expression for “God is great” — during the shooting. General Cone said soldiers at the scene had reported “similar” accounts....

General Cone said that terrorism was not being ruled out, but that preliminary evidence did not suggest that the rampage had been an act of terrorism.

So that yelling of "Allahu Akbar," that doesn't suggest terrorism?

The rampage recalled other mass shootings in the United States, including 13 killed at a center for immigrants in upstate New York last April, the deaths of 10 during a gunman’s rampage in Alabama in March and 32 people killed at Virginia Tech in 2007, the deadliest shooting in modern American history.

Not to me, it doesn't. Hasan was a psychiatrist, working among psychiatrists. He was trusted and given access to places that are secured from the general public. And with that access he was able to kill and wound scores of military personnel. It's not like cases where some previously unexamined person bursts into a public place and starts shooting everyone.

There are a lot of questions here, and we need to be brave about asking them.

Mr. Obama called the shootings “a horrific outburst of violence” and urged Americans to pray for those who were killed and wounded.

“It is difficult enough when we lose these men and women in battles overseas,” he said. “It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.”

The president pledged “to get answers to every single question about this horrible incident.”

I'm going to remember that pledge. And it is long past time for the President to step up and commit to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Enough with the demonstrations of thoughtful deliberation and concerned facial expressions made while saluting a flag-draped coffin. It is important for Obama to demonstrate leadership in war today.

"Such as? More troops, what? You have no idea, do you? It just feels good to say it though, doesn't it."

Such as a fucking plan for Christ sake. Something. Feels good? Are you serious? You think it feels good to say that the President of the United States should step up to the plate and do his freaking job? Add more troops. Withdraw the troops. STOP LEAVING THEM HANGING

The inability to tell ourselves the truth is a national sickness. The only explanation for Hasan's rise is that he was protected by political correctness, that his psychological defects would have disqualified anyone but a Muslim. His superiors were obviously more afraid of seeming politically incorrect than they were of furthering the career of a sick man.

We are at war with a religion, but this cannot be admitted. We will lose that war if we can't tell ourselves the truth.

This man was obviously insane, but his religion gave him a framework to hang his insanity on.

And the questions nobody else seems to be asking: How many other potential Nidal Hasans are there in our military? How many other potential fifth columnists prepared to murder American service members at the drop of a hat? How many other red flags have been ignored due to political correctness? And how many more will die in the future because of it?

The religion of peace defines peace as the aftermath of an attack to conquer opposition believers, but it is careful not to publicly commit it's warriors to an aggressive intent until the forces have lined up to insure a victory and not a defeat from the attack. The death by suicide as an heroic interim measure is also honored, like throwing onself onto a live grenade to save others, like this Perp discussed doing. Our rule of law says that being a Muslim is another honored and equal religious expression. This attitude does leave opposition to Muslim attacks paralized until the planned attack is already underway. Try telling a group of Imams that an airline will not take you on a flight when no Imam has yet started his attack. I keep seeing Obama's actions in the mid-east and remember that some vey intelligent Hindu friends told me confidently that Obama was definitely a Muslim.

So I go to Damascus and join their military because they have great educational benefits and I can do quite well. At first I study medicine then I shift over to psychiatry. The guys in the Syrian Army tease me all the time. They're bastards, they are. Fucking Syrians, generally they were inconsiderate and unkind to me. The Army promoted me. I wasn't that great of a psychiatrist, and the worst thing about it was, I never did get t the core of my own hangups. Pffffft. Anyhoo, the Syrian Army keeps attacking a city in Israel where Christians live! I'm against that so I tried to get out of the Syrian Army but they said I have to stay for the full term of my enlistment. That really pisses me off. They continued to attack Christians living in Israel so I must make my own personal war with them from within their own army. So I … nah, forget it. This isn't working, the whole premise is insane.

SteveR is right I think. The military's judgment is often overwhelmed by the over riding mandate of leftish tolerance. So if you want to blame the military you need to first look in the mirror and ask who has been foisting all these make society better missions on the military.

Is there a fear of suspecting or offending Muslims in the military that keeps people who should see signs of dysfunction from acknowledging what they see or doing anything about it?

This fear runs through our entire society, not just the military.

There should be rigorous equality for Muslims.

Yes, but the demand for this creates the fear above. Report the flying imans and you're a racist. Hell, it's racist to suggest that the greatest threat of terrorism in the world is from Muslims without making a shitload of qualifications.

The problems at Ft. Hood reflect the problems in our society as a whole.

On the other hand, if it really is the case that people in the military are harassing Muslims, that too should not be ignored. There should be rigorous equality for Muslims.

and

The enemy is not Islam. We should never allow ourselves to fall into that trap.

No, the enemy IS Islam. Islam has been the enemy for over a thousand years and the only time when its followers have not been attacking us was when they were militarily too weak to do so.

The trap is to believe that Islam is not the enemy, that this decades-long pattern of muslim terrorism and centuries-long pattern of muslim aggression is simply....what? A few bad people who don't realize that "real" Islam teaches peace?

We need to wake up on this. Islam is incompatible with our civilization. Islam is the problem. This idea that Islam is not the problem is very dangerous. Keep that up and you keep us from defending ourselves, potentially to the point that it becomes too late to save our civilization.

And when he talked about fighting "the aggressor," he said that his fellow soldiers "should stand up and help the armed forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan," Lee said.

---

I saw that interview, and that's a complete misquote. Here it is, at 1:20 in.

Col. Terry Lee: "He said precisely that maybe the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor. At first we thought he was talking about how the Muslims should stand up and help the armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, but apparently that wasn't the case because there was other times he would make comments to other individuals about how we shouldn't be in the war in the first place."

How can they get that quote so wrong, when it's there on YouTube for anyone to find?

There are a lot of questions here, and we need to be brave about asking them.

No bravery needed, unless one lives their lives afraid of political correctness and its feared but ultimately powerless consequences. Just ask and demand answers.

We are at war with a religion, but this cannot be admitted.

The enemy is not Islam. We should never allow ourselves to fall into that trap.

Really? It's not a systematic world view that encourages through it's Holy Writings the death and destruction of all who do not truly believe in Islam? The only worldview that has millions of adherents alive now who actively promote such killing and destruction today? Is there any other Current worldview that actively and publicly encourages and carries out such killing and destruction today on a similar scale? Is there any other worldview that only provides the minimum amount of denunciation of such acts by those claiming adherence to it's principles, refusing to continually and vociferously seek to publicly disavow such actions?

We need to wake up on this. Islam is incompatible with our civilization. Islam is the problem. This idea that Islam is not the problem is very dangerous. Keep that up and you keep us from defending ourselves, potentially to the point that it becomes too late to save our civilization.

The popular image of the military as a group of gungho super patriots or as a highly organized dedicated violent machine is a little askew. That model might reflect some effective combat units, but most of the Army is a vast federal bureaucracy. Careerism and conformity are the general rule. If someone had advocated the removal of this Major on national security grounds, he would have been risking his own career.

But it does include a rethinking of speeches such as those given by the President in Egypt that seeks to appease:

More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

rather than recognize the true roots and history of Islamic terrorism and incompatibility with Western WorldViews.

In other words, backbone.

You cannot defeat Islam nor should that be the goal of the civilized World. But a civilized and determined world - or at least World Power - can contain it.

The enemy is not Islam. We should never allow ourselves to fall into that trap.

Meade, I fear that you are the one who has fallen into a trap.

Until this conflict the paradigm was that nation-states contended with each other, each nation-state representing a certain political agenda. The winner's agenda would be ascendant in the aftermath.

Now I assume you agree that we are at war. Most of the opposition to fighting this war takes the position that we have no business contending with nation-states, Iraq and Afghanistan, that have not committed legally definable acts of war against us.

The truth is, that paradigm is as old-fashioned as satin breeches. Islam is a religion in which there is no distinction between religious dictates and political agenda. If you are in conflict with the one, you cannot also be tolerant of the other. It is not the intolerance of the West that makes this so, it is the received teachings of Islam that require it of its adherents.

I suspect that what you are leery of, with good reason, is that uncontrolled Islamophobia could lead to lynchings. Sure we must guard against such terrible things. Many, if not most Muslims are not jihadis. Most Germans were not Nazis either, but our bombs fell on the just and unjust alike. What we are currently doing is committing national suicide for the sake of a pretty lie.

Street Reaction after President Obama's Speech to Appease the Muslim World in Cairo on June 4:

From Islamabad:

"He started with 'aslamalaykum,'" the traditional Islamic greeting, a young man with a thick mustache told me. "And he quoted from the Koran ... . These are good things," he said with a shy smile."He understands us better," a shopkeeper in the mosque-market said."But that doesn't change reality. America is at war with us."

America is at War with us.

Let that sink in for just a moment.

That's a typical reaction, representative of most reported from ordinary Muslims in the Middle East after the speech.

Military bases are gun free zones. Perfect place for someone bent on mass murder to strike.Florida - I'm pretty sure that Hasan was not a combat trained soldier. He probably had to qualify with a M4/M16/M9 but was probably not issued one. I haven't seen an official source for the weapon(s) but my guess they were privately owned.

If those of y'all who want to fight a war with "islam" and its BILLION followers wanna go ahead and sign up, be my guest... but even if every single American citizen was given weapons and training and sent overseas to occupy and pacify all of the muslim lands, you'd still be a little short. It's kind of a non-starter.

As for Obama and the usual anti-dithering call to arms, I heard former senator Warner the other day say that the Afghanistan call is the hardest he's seen any president and congress have to make in his many decades of serving in government, and that he's heartened that Obama is surrounded by highly competent aides like Gen. Jones and Sec. Gates, and that we should be thankful they are taking the time to review the situation thoroughly before making a decision. Because despite what your cartoon-like worldview suggests, Obama is doing a soup to nuts review, meeting every day, asking sitreps of our people down to the provincial level, asking what they think they can actually accomplish, trying to set some achievable (as opposed to idiotic and ideologically driven) goals. In a situation that everyone agrees is a shit show of the highest order.

Making the best possible decision and taking the time to do it is NOT leaving "the troops" hanging in the wind. It's doing them justice. Despite what yer yammering.

On top of everything, the Army is very PC and its not at all unimagineable that he would not be called out.

No, it isn't, but it lives or dies on the appropriations voted on by people like Pelosi Galore, Henry Waxman, Congwethman Fwank, Christopher Dodd (who once questioned our opposition to Communism), the Dick from Illinois (who compared our guys to the Nazis), and let's not forget former Senator "A-stan is a necessary war", and the unlamented Teddy Kennedy.

Buck these people and you kiss your career good-bye.

Meade said...

The enemy is not Islam. We should never allow ourselves to fall into that trap.

Half right. There are plenty of Moslems in this country who came here to get away from this sort of thing at home, but Islam has never undergone the kind of introspection and reformation other religions have. It makes it easy for fanatics to whip people up into a frenzy that can result in things like this. People like garage will bring up the Crusades, but that is the point. Christianity has moved away from that kind of fanaticism.

Seneca the Younger said...

So what's the solution? Genocide?

That's their solution. We have to recognize we have a security crisis and letting a pack of left-wing political opportunists keep us from doing anything about it will only get more people killed.

I suppose until people start dying by the dozen in places like Haight-Ashbury and Hyde Park, the idiots who helped prolong the good Major's career will stay in office.

I believe it very likely--almost a certainly--that this guy's Muslim beliefs were a significant factor in the killings.

But it does not follow from this that Islam, or Muslims as a group, are the enemy.

Since 9/11 there have been very few Jihad style attacks in the United States, and all of those appear to have been one off individual actions by individuals. There have been group attacks plotted, but the plots have been ineffective and have been discovered and stopped.

To me one of the big stories is that Radical International Islamists have been pathetically unable to recruit active followers in the United States. We have millions of Muslims embedded in all levels of our society, and tens of thousands of recent immigrants.

It would create havoc in this country if we had just a dozen attacks like this one every year, and a few dozen more DC Sniper type individuals roaming our cities. With a hundred or two hundred dedicated recruits the radicals could make our lives miserable.

This has not happened.

Surely part of the reason it has not happened has been the focus on deterrent and discovery via homeland security.

But the most important factor is that American Muslims are not terrorists, just as most of the billion or so Muslims throughout the world are not terrorists.

Make Islam and Muslims in general the enemy, and you will create an injustice and create more terrorists.

"How was it that the military trained and employed this man in psychiatry and did not perceive his deep problems? I think that part of psychiatric training involves subjecting the would-be psychiatrist to psychological analysis. Why did this man slip through the system?"

I don't like the conclusion I'm drawing from considering this question, so don't take what I'm about to say as a defense of the way the military vets psychiatrists. On the contrary, it's an indictment. But: Are we sure there is a psychiatric practice "system" within the military for the man to have slipped through? Lets remember, he made it through med school, through residency, then through specialist training. By the time he got to the military, he had paperwork in the form of a CV saying he was sane. I don't think the military bothered to vet him much beyond seeing what his CV (resume, whatever it would be for a medical professional) said, and confirming that he actually completed the educational tasks that he did. In a hell of a lot of cases, I think that in addition to standard double-checks on references would be good enough.

I'll defer to Pogo on how this procedure works in the real world, since he's a medical professional and I'm not. So I might be wrong. But what I wrote above is how I would guess things work.

Now if I'm wrong about any of this, Pogo or someone else please correct me. Correct me if you have actual knowledge that I'm wrong; otherwise, I'll just view it as a "disagreement" ;) . But anyway, my point is that the vetting was his medical and psychiatric training, and I only think now, in the light of this event, would anyone even had reason to question the validity of such vetting.

The only explanation for Hasan's rise is that he was protected by political correctness, that his psychological defects would have disqualified anyone but a Muslim. His superiors were obviously more afraid of seeming politically incorrect than they were of furthering the career of a sick man.

Never forget that the Army is, among other things, a bureaucracy. Drumming someone out --even a crazy -- takes paperwork and time, and it's quite likely that some officer somewhere didn't think it worth it, even if it was brought to his or her attention. Far easier to move the person elsewhere.

Note that I have no idea if this actually happened. I only offer the suggestion to rebut the only explanation.

On the other hand, one has to wonder whether Hasan's dread of being deployed to a Muslim country stemmed from his fear that most of the negative shit he believed about the US presence might have been dispelled.

garage mahal said... And it is long past time for the President to step up and commit to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Such as? More troops, what? You have no idea, do you? It just feels good to say it though, doesn't it.

Good comeback by Garage on Althouse's throw away line. Ann doesn't know what is the right course of decision in Afghanistan and neither does Obama. Things have changed dramatically in the last 6 months. Major disruptions to our only logistics path into Afghanistan with Taliban in Pakistan roaming free. Bush's Special Friend Karzai is now thought so corrupted and so coopted he makes the Soviet's communist puppets look good by comparison. Enemy Afghans have infilitrated the police and armed forces are are whacking Americans and Brits sent to train what Bush thought were "noble freedom lovers fighting for a modern country where women can shed their Burquas. Women in burquas are now happily planting IEDs to help kill Americans- Emulating the Iraq example, quadrupling the casualty rates, and sending fearful Americans slogging through sewer ditches rather than dry roads because it is worth it to better their chances of saving their legs, faces, and balls...assuming they live through an IED detonation.

===============Meade - The enemy is not Islam. We should never allow ourselves to fall into that trap.

Meade pulls a dummy!

That is like saying there is no problem with National Socialism, the path to national prosperity. Just a few misguided individuals who gave National Socialism a bad name.Or with Communism...the dogma and intellectual discipline and historical truth of communism is flawless. Really!. The only problem is everywhere communism was implimented and masses of citizens died rests with the fact that change was not implimented correctly.

Excuses for Communism, Islam, National Socialism are like assholes. In fact, the excuse makers are the asshole Nazis, approvers of what the Jewish Bolsheviks did, and ever Islamoid who blames anything an Islamoid does that involves butchery of innocents as All-The_fault of the West.

--Taking responsibility for the matter and not whining about what he "inherited."

--Devoting more time and energy to the issue.

--And, if he actually believes that we can or should not seek a decisive military and political solution in Afghanistan, having the balls to say so and act on the belief.

Gee, all things, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Co. should have done, but never did, yet Ann fell over herself defending them because they were "good men" who were doing their best.

If Ann were serious about this war, she would be encouraging both her sons to sign up for the military and at least shelling out the $1.98 for the magnetic ribbon for her precious Audi--risk of scratching it be damned!

If those of y'all who want to fight a war with "islam" and its BILLION followers wanna go ahead and sign up, be my guest

I seem to recall the very small British Army took on "Islam" in places like India and the Sudan and handled it quite neatly, as we are doing in Iraq, A-stan, and the Philippines.

As for Obama and the usual anti-dithering call to arms, I heard former senator Warner the other day say that the Afghanistan call is the hardest he's seen any president and congress have to make

Warner is an old lady who got into the Senate because he married Elizabeth Taylor. Obama's criminal negligence on the troop decision stands in stark contrast to one of your heroes, FDR. In July, 1944, Roosevelt heard arguments from Nimitz and MacArthur on how the run up to the Home Islands should be handled in the Pacific and made the right decision in 2 hours (MacArthur's way, of course).

Making the best possible decision and taking the time to do it is NOT leaving "the troops" hanging in the wind.

Tell it to the guys on the ground - or, better yet, to the widows at Fort Hood.

PS The hillbilly thing is way old. There are more good brains with college degrees that disagree with you than you have brain cells.

MadisonMan - Note that I have no idea if this actually happened. I only offer the suggestion to rebut the only explanation.

MadisonMan, that was great! I laughed out loud at that line. Brilliant! I hope I remember it and get an opportunity to use it in an energy consult situation where everyone knows the obvious about what caused the fuckup but want to pay people to posit alternative theories to gain a shred of CYA.

Chase and MnMark are dead on target here. Islam and the Koran are indeed the problem--the functional equivalent of the Andromeda Strain. The Koran is like a dessicated desert flower seed buried in the desert for years on end, awaiting only a drop of water in the form of a set of fresh hands to pick it up and eyes to read to germinate some previously untutored youth into the full flower of an "other"-hating Jihadist.

Senaca the Younger asks: "What's the solution? Genocide? To which I would reply with a question of my own and provide the answer as well. Shortly after the transcontinental railroad was put into operation with the final golden spike at Promentary Point, Utah, what was it that allowed a young widdowed mother with twin six-year old daughters to board a train in St. Louis and safely ride to Sacramento CA safe in the knowledge they would not be attacked and killed by Indians? Was it because the trains had bullet-proof windows? Was it because the engine and its engineer were armored against attack? Was it because every bridge and tunnel was guarded by the Army? Was it because the Cavalry road escort? No. It was none of those. It was because we had killed all the Indians--or at least so many as the few survivors posed no numerical or military threat. But then our ancestors were made of sterner stuff, more confident of their culture and civilization.

I spent the last two years of my 20 years in the Air Force stationed at Fort Hood. I'd like to reinforce what a few commenters have already said.

Fort Hood has pretty strict gun control. You can carry your personal weapons in the trunk of your car, but you can not carry them on your person, even if you have a state issued conceal carry license.

Soldiers do not routinely carry weapons at all unless going to or from training that requires them.

Even then they don't usually carry ammunition with them if they are going to actually fire them, the ammo is issued at the firing range.

Military medical facilities are protected from mass murder by 'firearms prohibited' signs.

The Military has a very large and aggressive 'social actions' function. The good purpose of Social Actions is to train military members to respect the individual rights of others and not engage in harmful personal behavior or illegal discrimination.

Sadly, Social Actions often acts as the "PC Police", ever vigilant for thought crime.

Any supervisor who reacted to a Muslim solider showing signs of active support for the enemy or desire to become a martyr for Islam places himself or herself one phone call away from career termination.

Once I heard that the shooter was an Islamic Army doctor my first reaction was 'thank God he wasn't an Air Force Pilot!'.

Yes, as he -and they- will be given many more passes. Unfortunately, it's going to take a huge non-Muslim body count before our political class acknowledges that Islam is beyond civilized redemption - that it's a violent political movement, and certainly not a religion.

On the other hand, if it really is the case that people in the military are harassing Muslims, that too should not be ignored. There should be rigorous equality for Muslims.

Are they harassing Muslims, or were they harassing this guy, because he kept talking about how we shouldn’t be at war with them? Because he was trying to convert everybody? Because he turned out to be the kind of guy who could do this? I’m not sure, but just because people made comments to him, doesn’t mean they’re making comment to everybody.

Alot of our PC problems would disappear if we would just take people at their words. This guy (if the reports are true) seems to have been pretty blatant.

If those of y'all who want to fight a war with "islam" and its BILLION followers wanna go ahead and sign up, be my guest...

Given the present state of technology, one warrior in the West is worth a thousand in the East. We refuse to use that technology for some good reasons, and also for some very bad ones. The more time that goes by, the smaller that ratio becomes.

True, only an infinitesimal segment of that billion Muslims is willing to take two pistols onto a US Army base, but the vast majority applauds it when it happens. I'm not making this up-- poll after poll shows this to be the case. The up side is that we don't have to kill all one billion of them, just enough to convince them not to support jihad against the US.

I don't come to conclusion this with any glee in my heart. If you can offer any solutions--not pablum--that come up short of violence I will be glad to entertain them.

The inability to tell ourselves the truth is a national sickness. The only explanation for Hasan's rise is that he was protected by political correctness, that his psychological defects would have disqualified anyone but a Muslim. His superiors were obviously more afraid of seeming politically incorrect than they were of furthering the career of a sick man.

Nonsense. Do you have any idea how hard it is for the military to keep and retain doctors and other professionals? Before they will discharge a doctor, especially one they apparently paid the training of, he would have to kill someone.

Trying to fight to wars with a completely voluntary military is a disaster. Yet no one is willing to admit it or do anything about it. We are asking a tiny fraction of the country to sacrifice their lives, sanity and families to fight this war while most of you (Ann included) go about your business.

Patriotism is easy when it involves nothing more than meaningless platitudes and accusing those who disagree with you of treason.

But anyway, my point is that the vetting was his medical and psychiatric training, and I only think now, in the light of this event, would anyone even had reason to question the validity of such vetting.

When you look at a medical person, you are going to be looking to see if they have a valid license and concentrating on medical stuff, not “is this guy crazy”. I don’t think psychiatrists or medical personnel get any special psych exam’s and even if they did they would probably know how to fake it better than anybody else.

It does seem utterly absurd, given what we know, that some people are trying to make this about him having some sort of secondary PTSD. To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle, I guess. This is why people don't trust the PC folks. They will ignore the truth to fit their fantasy.

There's a lot of wild speculation going on, both in this thread and elsewhere. Added to it is the equally wild projections from Hasan as supposed exemplar of a larger group (sometimes defined relgiously as "Muslims," sometimes in more complicated fashion as "jihadists"). It's a short step from there to equating Hasan's murderous rampage with the imagined proclivities of the larger group.

Hello: no one (yet) has the facts. There will be time enough to diagnose Hasan when something solid is actually known about him and what made him tick. There will be time enough to figure out whether the military was asleep at the switch, or willfully blinded by PC nostrums, or none of the above. No one here knows whether the internet reports about his supposed blogposts regarding suicide bombers is true.

So, just perhaps, a little humility is in order -- at leaset enough to acknowledge that no one knows nearly enough about the facts to make solid judgments about who's to blame (other than Hasan), who deserves praise (other than the MP who took him down) and what should be done going forward.

Ann has it exactly right. Right now, there are lots of questions and no answers. All the rest is just BS.

There's a fine and fuzzy line between bat-shit crazy, and devout Muslim. Anyone who believes that they can guarantee themselves 72 virgins in Paradise by blowing up children, and believes that women should be covered from head to toe at all times, and that gays and adulterers should be stoned to death, is pretty much insane by definition, aren't they?

What's the difference between believing those things, and believing that bugs are crawling under your own skin? Only one: The first is a danger to others, and the second is (probably) just a danger to himself.

According to the aunt, apparently a 39-year-old, trained psychiatrist could no longer take name calling or being picked on, which started when he was 30 years old.

Oh for Christ's sake....grow up or get some help. All this whining from Muslims and from Obama is making think that they are all a bunch of freaking PUSSIES.

The disturbing thing is that this man was supposed to be a trained profession dealing with the psychological problems of other people and he can't even deal with his own enough to recognize that he needs help.

I can't imagine the damage that he has done to others in his psychological counseling.

1) His aunt is lying. It's been 8 years since 9/11. At some point in that 8 years he would had to "re-up" - enlistment terms don't run that long. So he VOLUNTARILY signed up, and he was there VOLUNTARILY.

He may have decided some time since then that he didn't want to be there any more, but she's lying that he's been trying to get out since 2001. That lie cannot be allowed to stand, and it cannot be emphasized enough that he was somehow "trapped" with no other way out is a ridiculous assertion. All he had to do was wait out his enlistment.

It wasn't like he was being asked to go overseas and shoot Muslims. He was just being asked to treat soldiers who returned from the battle. If he couldn't bring himself to treat a patient regardless of his (or their) faith, then he had no business taking the Hippocratic Oath in the first place.

2) People are under gross misconceptions regarding the difference between psychologists and psychiatrists. Psychologists (the ones who actually hold doctoral degrees - not "therapists" which are lesser trained holders of bachelors or masters degrees) receive years of training in the field.

PSYCHIATRISTS, however, are medical doctors who do a couple of extra rotations in psych wards. Very few of them have any actual therapeutic experience: mostly they're prescription writers, not therapists.

[My wife is currently getting her doctorate in psychology, and you can trust me that the difference between what she does and what a psychiatrist does is enormous. Basically, psychiatrists usually spend 15 or 20 minutes with a patient, decide what medication they think the patient needs, and move on to the next patient. That might work for a psychotic or schizophrenic who mainly needs meds, but it sure isn't going to treat something like PTSD which requires on-going therapy.]

The "y'all" was just an illusion on my part, I suppose. I notice all your alternative realities are out today - garage, fls, Freder.

It must get crowded inside that tiny brain.

I know it's the left-wing thing to claim you're the only one who has the answer, but, if you care to open your eyes (not to mention your mind) and close your mouth, you might see a lot of smart people engaging in civil, as well as civilized, debate trying to understand this thing.

Tyrone Slothrop: Until this conflict the paradigm was that nation-states contended with each other, each nation-state representing a certain political agenda.

Er, no. "Nation-states contend with each other, each nation-state representing a certain political agenda" was almost wholly unique to the 20th century. See: Barbary coast, privateering, sabotage, insurrection, guerilla warfare, etc. etc. etc. The hope in the 20th century was that wise elder statesmen would reduce both the scope and the duration of warfare, if not end it completely; cf. the League of Nations and "The War to End All Wars." With the fall of global Communism ending the last of the Great Powers view of warfare, it's actually back to what is, historically, business as usual.

"Nonsense. Do you have any idea how hard it is for the military to keep and retain doctors and other professionals? Before they will discharge a doctor, especially one they apparently paid the training of, he would have to kill someone."

As usual Feder you have no idea what you are talking about and no just enough to be dangerous.

First, you are right that it is hard to recruit doctors. But, I was a trial counsel at Fort Hood and one of my jurisidictions was the hospital. I can tell you, that the Army does put doctors out of the Army for misconduct and psychological issues. While I was there, we put a guy out who accidentily shot himself in Afghanistan with a contraband Russian pistol. The fact that he was a doctor didn't save him.

According to NPR this morning, this guy once gave a talk at a medical conference about how it was okay to behead unbelievers. There were several Mulims in the room who objected and said "this guy is gonig to shoot someone some day". Clearly, this guy should have been put out of the Army and probably locked up. But he wasn't. And the reason was that the Army is rampant with PC and no one wanted to risk looking biased against a Muslim.

As far as a draft goes. A draft is a terrible idea. No one in the military wants it. The problem with a draft is that you have to be brutal about diciplining your soldiers. Right now, since everyone wants to be there, threatening to kick someone out is deterent enough. But if you draft people, that is an incentive not a deterent. So we would have to go back to sending people to jail and "administrative confinement" for minor offenses. And sure enough people like you, who demanded the draft but have no understand or or love for the military, would be the first ones to scream about poor kids having their rights violated. It would be a complete disaster. The draftees would be more trouble than they would be worth. We are better off with a professional volunteer military.

You know, Allahu Akbar isn't just a call to jihad. It's a phrase with multiple meanings depending on context.

In this case, the meaning was "God help me!"

Even in English, that phrase has multiple meanings, starting with one of despair, not anger.

This guy was obviously pushed past his breaking point. He had major conflicts between his religious duty and his military duty and tried to resolve them by seeking a discharge.

He certainly didn't hide his conflicts; the FBI was watching him after all. But his preferred solution wasn't coming to him and the pressures were ratched up with him immanent deployment to a place where he was going to have to fight (even at a remove) his co-religionists. That meant going against an explicit religious duty to not do that.

He snapped. His religion certainly had something to do with it, probably most to do with it, but he was acting as a shattered man, not a covert jihadi.

Meade is certainly correct in saying that we should avoid falling into the trap of seeing Islam as a monolithic enemy. The trap is all comfy though, so it's hard for people to resist. After all, having unexamined prejudices confirmed is just cozy as all get out.

David,"But the most important factor is that American Muslims are not terrorists, just as most of the billion or so Muslims throughout the world are not terrorists."

A significant number of them are terrorists/willing to be terrorists, wrapped in a significant percentage who support what they do, at least intellectually and emotionally, inside an even larger percentage who are either too afraid to speak up, or don't care enough to.

"Once I heard that the shooter was an Islamic Army doctor my first reaction was 'thank God he wasn't an Air Force Pilot!'."

As a former Air Force pilot, I have to agree.

Though it sickens me, I can't shake the belief that unless things change, it is inevitable that someday we will be counting the dead caused by a Air Force (or Navy) pilot co-religionist of Major Hasan.

PC is a powerful force for change that numbs the mind, replaces morality, and supports the slaughter of humans as long as they are not from a Protected Class.

We don't need to go to war with Islam, fortunately, as our ancestors did repeatedly when the muslims invaded Spain, France, Austria, and the Balkans. All we have to do is contain Islam within the current islamic lands and then let time do its work. Initiate an out-migration of muslims from the West back to their homelands. Put strict restrictions on muslim travel to the West. Since they have no military power of any significance, if we don't literallly GIVE them visas to come here, they can't come here and hurt us. And instead of allowing discontented muslims to leave muslim lands and live among us, let them stay there and agitate for change. Let the muslims live in muslim lands without the safety valve of leaving for the West, and with time, Islam will collapse from within as soviet communism collapsed: the people living under it will see how much better our lives are without it, and they will eventually rid themselves of it. THEN we can welcome them, when they're no longer muslims.

So, no, we don't need genocide, and we don't need a war. We need peaceful, firm separation, which is entirely attainable with very little effort on our part and no bloodshed. A quarantine zone for those who are members of this cult.

Funny how hard it is for a liberal to see any solutions between surrender to Islam and killing muslims. Why is that? I suppose because to a liberal, actively discriminating on the basis of cultural differences is just about as morally repugnant as genocide.

Well, maybe they're not our enemy, but they certainly consider us to be their enemy. Not every Muslim; just a whole hell of a lot of them. Remember the assholes dancing in the streets after 9-11?

We may not be at war with Islam; but Islam is certainly at war with us. And it really doesn't matter if some small percentage of Muslims isn't jihadist; the Jihadis don't consider those moderates to be real Muslims. By their own definition of their own religion/ideology, 100% of all true Muslims are engaged in a jihad against the West.

Edutcher-- I said "y'all" because I'm from the South. It would be great, when making pronouncements about how people should be having civilized, rational discussions, if you didn't make the exact ad-hominem, grouping into categories move that you accuse others of doing. Cause it makes you seem like, you know, a flagrant hypocrite.

If those of y'all who want to fight a war with "islam" and its BILLION followers wanna go ahead and sign up, be my guest... but even if every single American citizen was given weapons and training and sent overseas to occupy and pacify all of the muslim lands, you'd still be a little short. It's kind of a non-starter.

Silly man. No one is proposing that we go one on one with Muslims. We didn't do that in any war EVER.

With our techology we would need a very low ratio of us to them to win. If.....we put our minds to it instead of being caving weenies and letting our Appoligist in Chief go groveling all over the world making us look like pushovers.

"Meade is certainly correct in saying that we should avoid falling into the trap of seeing Islam as a monolithic enemy."

Yeah. We shouldn't have ever fallen into the trap of seeing Nazism or Shintism as a monolithic enemy. Lots of Nazis were peaceful people. Hell, Heiddeger was a Nazi. Yeah, there were some Nazis who put people in ovens. But millions of people all over the world were Nazis and never did anything like that. And also, National Socialism provided a great deal of comfort and wisdom to oppressed people. The same can be said of Shintism in Japan. Just because some were using the philosophy as a justification to rape Nanking, doesn't mean there weren't millions of peaceful nice people in Japan.

John Burgess -- No, I don't think this guy "just snapped". This attack was obviously planned -- he brought 2 handguns with him to work, he cleaned out his apartment the day before. The idea that this turd was under so much "stress" that it made him shoot dozens of unarmed men while shouting "Allah Achbar" is stupid beyond belief.

Unless you think that this same explanation might be valid for the 9-11 hijackers. They just had too much tension in their lives, and lost their cool one day.

A few things about the story seem incomplete, possibly inaccurate, or entirely missing.

The idea that he was being harassed emanated from Hasan's family. Presume that they are accurately repeating what Hasan told them. That still doesn't make it true.

It could well have been a fabrication, an excuse for seeking discharge from the Army.

Who harasses a Major? Captains? Lieutenants? Sergeants? Corporals? Privates? Not at all likely. Senior officers who have had PC drilled into them for decades? Again, not likely.

Who was his Imam when he moved from an American-born guy who wanted to be a military officer to a jihadist bent on killing his fellow soldiers? That Imam needs to be interviewed and investigated, pronto. As does any other soldier or civilian employee at Ft Hood who belongs to the same mosque as did Hasan.

Why is the Army forced to accept Muslims as officers and enlisted, except for those with much needed language skills? Is there a PC policy run amok here? ___________This loss of American soldiers' lives happened in Texas, where the media was able to report it in great, if often inaccurate, detail. Why aren't there media reports (other than the perfunctory body counts) about the war in Afghanistan?

We used to be up to our eyeballs in embedded reporters. Now that Obama has been elected the embeds have all but disappeared.

Maybe the MSM does not want to report what is happening to US military members while Obama dithers with the decision to send them the help that McChrystal has been begging for. Out of sight, out of mind, you know?

The scale is much different, but in some ways the Ft. Hood killings will be Obama's 9/11. If he doesn't get it that he's the POTUS and needs to actually command, he's toast.

While I was there, we put a guy out who accidentily shot himself in Afghanistan with a contraband Russian pistol. The fact that he was a doctor didn't save him.

Okay, I was obviously being hyperbolic when I said a doctor would have to kill someone to get out and your counter to demonstrate that I "have no idea" what I am talking about is a doctor who accidentally shot himself with a contraband pistol.

Basically, psychiatrists usually spend 15 or 20 minutes with a patient, decide what medication they think the patient needs, and move on to the next patient. That might work for a psychotic or schizophrenic who mainly needs meds, but it sure isn't going to treat something like PTSD which requires on-going therapy.]

This is not always true. Psychiatrists do meds, true, but many also do psychotherapy.

So, no, we don't need genocide, and we don't need a war. We need peaceful, firm separation, which is entirely attainable with very little effort on our part and no bloodshed. A quarantine zone for those who are members of this cult.

Isn't a pity they just happen to control more than a quarter of the world's supply of oil and none of you assholes are willing to make the least sacrifice to reduce this country's dependence on oil.

Well, depending on the identity of the parents and grandparents of the shooter in Orlando, we may have to go to war against a whole 'nother religion.

Don’t be cute. If the information we are getting is correct (I’m sure some of it is not) this guy’s decision was based in large part on his religion, or his interpretation of his religion. I’m not one who thinks we are at war with all Muslims, but the ones that believe like it sounds like this guys did? Yes.

Isn't a pity they just happen to control more than a quarter of the world's supply of oil and none of you assholes are willing to make the least sacrifice to reduce this country's dependence on oil.

I'm willing to sacrifice some completely unusable tundra land to be able to produce our own energy supply. Even some stupid brown bears that weren't smart enough to not get trapped by the last ice age and morphed into polar bears. Assuming Global Warming isn't a myth and scam to keep us poor and in serfdom, then the bears will need to evolve or die. I don't care. This is life.

Evolution is a bitch isn't it?

If we produce from our own hugely abundant oil, gas, shale oil, coal reserves we will not be dependant on foreign countries that hate us and mean us harm. And as an added bonus....we create those jobs that our Hopey Changey leader is promising.

I work with, and am friends with, more Muslims than most Americans probably are, because I'm an academic.

It's not hard to pick out the Muslims who are likely to be dangerous; ones who are always going on about Israel and Zionists and whatnot.

It's like the difference between white people and skinheads, or the difference between vaguely leftist people and actual Communists, or the difference between Christians and the Westboro Baptist Church.

It's the way they talk about things and the kinds of things they talk about.

I've met some scary Muslims; I've also met some skinheads. The vast majority of Muslims I know are just like anyone else.

But that tiny minority of deranged fanatics is dangerous out of proportion to its numbers and people need to realize that.

This Army doctor, he was born and raised in America; the July 7th bombers were likewise born and raised in the UK.

As Marcia noted, this isn't terrorism. This is another front in the battle against Islamic and Arabic extremism.

As I see it, the Army has two options to avoid such problems. One is to bar Muslims and Arabs from joining the Army. That limits the ability of units to have good translators readily available. The other is to closely monitor Arabic and Muslim soldiers and to train soldiers that taunting, teasing and harassing can over time build quiet resentment and rage in individuals until they snap. The second option would be difficult to regulate, but there is a benefit to having Arabic personnel, so as difficult as it may be, training and vigilance are the best options.

Gabriel said: "The vast majority of Muslims I know are just like anyone else."

I'm not sure that the Muslims that you meet in American academia are representative of the world's Muslim population.

Most of the Chinese I've met were brilliant in mathematics -- probably because most of them were in the math department at university. This doesn't mean that most of the billion or so Chinese are good at math.

I'd like to see some polling data showing what percentage of Muslims support jihad against the West. I'll try to look that up; if anyone comes across such data, please share it.

Kylos -- someone upthread made the very good point that the "teasing" excuse is probably BS: Not too many Majors have to worry about being ridiculed, either by subordinates (obviously) or by career officers of equal or higher rank.

Probably just as bad as the military walking on egg shells so as not to upset CAIR, the MSM is doggedly trying to spin this that there is no connection to terrorism and the like. If they could suppress that he was Muslim, shouted "Allāhu Akbar", was wearing Moslem dress (and was therefore out of uniform), had argued for suicide murder of our troops, etc., they would have, and have tried to do so ever since.

Apparently, there has been a lot of sanitization over the last day of articles that originally looked like they would have been offensive to CAIR. The Takbir (Allāhu Akbar) being moved from a heading and buried within the article. Not mentioning the Muslim dress, prayers, or Koran or his rants. That sort of thing.

And that worries me, that political correctness is getting in the way of protecting ourselves from Islamic terrorists.

Of course, this MSM PC view of the world and the news that they provide us isn't limited to Moslems. Rather, you see it all the time, with their refusal to note when criminals are illegal aliens or Black, when Democrats are corrupt, etc.

And I went up there and I said, "Shrink, I wanna kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. I wanna see blood and guts and gore and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,KILL! KILL!!" And I started jumping up and down yelling, "KILL! KILL!" and he started jumping up and down with me and we was both jumping up and downyelling, "KILL! KILL!" And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "Kid, you're our boy."

In an interview, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and had sought for several years to be discharged from the military.

In eight years he wasn't able to separate himself from the Army? I call BS.

Freder, I'd be perfectly happy to have my tax dollars pay for new fission power plants. That's what you mean by "mak(ing) a sacrifice to reduce (our) depedence on oil", right?

Which just demonstrates you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Nuclear supplies a little over 19% of the electricity in this country, oil about 1.6%. Electricity production represents about 1% of U.S. oil consumption. So even if we replaced all oil plants with nuclear, it would barely make a dent in our oil consumption.

My last point may sound like I think that all Moslems are terrorists. They aren't. Rather, I agree with Gabriel Hanna that probably most Moslems in this country are not radicalized, and are normal, just like most Whites are normal, but some of the skin heads are just as radicalized as the radicalized Moslems who would commit this sort of atrocity.

Well, Duh'Oh! Saying it doesn't just relegates one to trying to pick fly$hit out of pepper.

The crazy makers on this one are that the military knew this guys predilections and he was still there? Why? He was a shrink type fer goodness sake, why did no one stand up, point and go "He's nucking futz!" SJS is just another excuse. This guy is part of the victim culture. Against the war? Like drugs, just say NO! You might have to go to jail but at least have the courage of your convictions!

@PrairieWind 11:10 NPRIf you haven't caught the NPR interview -- listen. (Though Instapundit says they have moved some stuff around on the site now, it is still there.)

As far as Hasan being harassed, it was telling that the former Muslim chaplain at Fort Hood (NIGHTLINE, Thursday night), who interviewed Hasan to take over for him on the base, said quite clearly that Hasan never mentioned being harassed to him. One would think that might be an issue of importance when one military employed Muslim soldier is talking with another military Muslim about working with other Muslim soldiers.

While incomplete, to be sure, I saw a note elsewhere this morning that there is NO RECORD of any complaint of harassment or inappropriate remarks being made by MAJ Hasan.

Also -- as noted above -- exactly who harassed him? Other medical professionals? Officers? Superior officers? Chaplain Shabazz has a prety sensible take on the needling / joking that does go on.

John (who has military experience)writes: A draft is a terrible idea. No one in the military wants it.

As some of you know, I am a military mom with an active, deployed son. Let me reiterate: Whoever put foreward the idea of a "draft" has neither the best for the military or the coutnry in mind.

At this point in American history a draft is a really ridiculous, stupid, and unnecessary, and perhaps even a dangerous idea.

It is usually proposed by people intent on deconstructing the military (in the name of "fairness??"). Sort of like how certain people are attempting to deconstruct the American economy and business model. The American health care system. The American educationa system. The American _______(fill in the blank).

That, (the draft) for one, is not going to happen. And should not, at this time.

1) that they're actually qualified to do so, or2) that they're not doing more harm then good.

Primary care physicians across the country routinely diagnose conditions like ADD, depression, bipolar, etc. despite having actually had little to no training to do so. Diagnoses like this require extensive training and testing to determine if they actually exist, but they do it anyway.

A parent comes in and says I think my kid has ADD because I looked it up on the internet and he has symptom A, B and C, so the doctor issues a diagnosis of ADD despite the fact that A, B and C are more likely caused by a lack of proper parenting, high sugar diets, insufficiently challenging classroom material, normal childhood behavior, etc.

Studies have repeatedly shown that, although psychiatrists are typically very good at prescribing the appropriate meds to treat a given condition, they are actually VERY POOR at making a proper diagnosis in the FIRST PLACE.

They simply don't have the training or experience to do so. Psychologists are the ones who are trained to give and interpret tests, provide psychotherapy, etc., NOT psychiatrists.

I'm willing to sacrifice some completely unusable tundra land to be able to produce our own energy supply.

For someone who claims to be a financial adviser, you are amazingly innumerate. Even if we drilled every drop of oil from the U.S. (and it would be at a much higher price than the current $80 per bbl), we could at best maintain our status of contributing about 15% or so to the world's oil supply (and that includes Canada)

Freder Frederson said... Freder, I'd be perfectly happy to have my tax dollars pay for new fission power plants. That's what you mean by "mak(ing) a sacrifice to reduce (our) depedence on oil", right?

Which just demonstrates you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Nuclear supplies a little over 19% of the electricity in this country, oil about 1.6%. Electricity production represents about 1% of U.S. oil consumption. So even if we replaced all oil plants with nuclear, it would barely make a dent in our oil consumption.

Gawd, Freder! If there is one subject you really need to stay away from besides your love of enemy combatants and their rights...it is in the area of technology, where you own the subcategories of complete idiocy by a single Althouse commentor on the subjects of thermodynamics, energy economics, and basic engineering/physics most 12 year olds understand.

Pastafarian was saying that you replace fossil with nuclear, as - say - Japan is doing, that frees up natural gas or biomethane to be used for vehicles. Or hydrogen, which the Japs have done a lot of research on, and identified lots of problems with using baseload nukes to generate the stuff - basically using huge amounts of heat energy to create useful electricity which then goes through a wicked inefficient electrolysis process losing most of the useful work the electrical product could be put to use in for a fuel worth less (at today's prices) than the electricity used to create it. All which simply creates a heat/fuel cell source that(hydrogen) can be made a hell of a lot easier by stripping hydrogen off natural gas molecules saved from being burned because you replace nat gas for electricity with (in Japan) recycled and reprocessed nuclear fuel.

"For someone who claims to be a financial adviser, you are amazingly innumerate. Even if we drilled every drop of oil from the U.S. (and it would be at a much higher price than the current $80 per bbl), we could at best maintain our status of contributing about 15% or so to the world's oil supply (and that includes Canada)"

For Freder it's all about the oil.Forget the idea of a clash of civilizations, the rejection of modernity, the expansion of an aggressive transnational ideology, etc. It's not Islamofacism. Its' the oil. If it wasn't for Haliburton..blah, blah, blah.

I wasn't trying to claim that my friends and acquaintances are representative of ALL MUSLIMS.

As for your poll idea: if you were raised from birth in a place where the government fed you a steady diet of lies about Jews and Americans, and also felt free to break into peoples houses and shoot them without trial, what sort of things do you think you would believe, and what sorts of things would you tell pollsters?

In short, what would be the point of even trying to commission such a poll?

Sure. You seem to have complete command of the Yankee form most of the time, particularly when you are calling everyone else Althouse Hillbillies.

p.s. Telling people they have "tiny brains" and to shut up does not qualify as civilized discussion. Dick.

I didn't say, shut up; I said open your mind. Small difference, I know. In any case, given your predilection for telling everyone else how wrong they are, you seem to have a low tolerance a taste of your own medicine.

I'm the first to say I don't have all the answers, so I listen to what people say and respond. I've even agreed with people like Cedar and the old fls, but I won't sit back when I hear something that I think is patent nonsense and not rebut it.

PS The Dick, as you called me in your oh-so-enlightened fashion, is the Senator form Illinois who compared our troops to the Nazis.

So an old guy kills a security guard, and holds one or two right wing views... and every Republican everywhere shares the guilt of the crime.

This guy is a devout muslim, made excuses for suicide bombers, gave away his belongings the morning before, and shouted Allahu Akbar before killing a bunch of soldiers and gee... its islamophobia to even suggest his noble and pure religion could possibly have anything to do with it.

Gabriel, I'm interested to see what percentage of the world's Muslim population thinks that all infidels should be killed, converted, or enslaved.

Or what percentage think that Israel should be wiped off the map, or what percentage (loudly or quietly) cheered 9-11.

Is it 10%, or is it 60%? That's a pretty big deal, you know. Are we facing "just" 100 million mortal enemies, or 600 million?

And I'm sure that there are reasons that a large part of Muslims believe these things; there were millions of Germans who were raised from the age of 5 to be good little Nazis, and the fact that they were indoctrinated as children didn't make them any less dangerous. In fact, they were the most fanatical Nazis.

Gawd, Freder! If there is one subject you really need to stay away from besides your love of enemy combatants and their rights...it is in the area of technology, where you own the subcategories of complete idiocy by a single Althouse commentor on the subjects of thermodynamics, energy economics, and basic engineering/physics most 12 year olds understand.

Gawd Cedarford, you should just stick to blaming the Jews for everything from the sinking of the Titantic (Goldberg, Steinberg, Iceberg, they are all part of the conspiracy) to the evils of the interstate highway system.

For all their natural ability to make tiny little radios (because of some genetic mutation shortly after WWII) they still haven't figured out how to make a fuel cell car that can deliver power for the same cost as an internal combustion engine--not even close. It might come eventually, but not until oil is much more expensive. Also, you still have the problem of creating a distribution system for hydrogen, an extremely volatile and flammable gas.

I don't think there's any clear cut, single reason why he did this. My guess is a lot of bad threads got all knotted up and he snapped. It doesn't seem like this is an organized mission, set up and directed by some major enemy.

Reading the article, this stood out: Hasan "did not make many friends" and "did not make friends fast," his aunt said. He had no girlfriend and was not married. "He would tell us the military was his life," she said."

The military was his life, he says, but he hated military life. Which says he hated life. He was likely clinically depressed--and depression being inward directed anger can often get vented outwards in irrational rage.

He couldn't find friends, was shunned by others, had nothing grounding him. He wasn't married--and in Muslim culture there isn't really (as far as I know) any virtue in remaining umarried. He was a 39 year old psychiatrist for goodness sakes. A doctor--a prize for many women seeking companionship. He wasn't a vocational loser. Which means he had some pretty severe other issues for him not to have landed someone.

Seems to me this makes him much more akin to a older version of the Virginia Tech killer.

This isn't to leave out the religious issue, more to say that if we're thinking this guy is simply an active, passionate jihadist we're missing the mark. He's in a different category, as he's not hooked up with some organized movement. Rather, his depression and inner rage found a channel through his religion. Just like so many really bad people have channeled their rage through other religions, like Christianity. They divert their self-rage, which can't seemingly find an answer, and apply it with some supposedly religiously valid concepts.

This happens all the time, in churches as much as in mosques, only usually it is done in if not socially accepted ways, at least in socially legal ways--even as there's no end of the destruction of communities.

Hasan is wholly to blame, a traitor who embraced his own rage rather than finding some solace and peace for himself. So, no excuses for him are offered. But if we're going to address this, it helps to see the root causes that lie beneath the apparent claims.

Of course. After the bombing of the World Trade Center, the 9/11 attacks, the Beltway Sniper attacks and the mass shootings at LAX, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Little Rock and Fort Hood the "real" danger is in falling prey to anti-Islamic hysteria... and not in falling prey to domestic, Muslim terrorists.

And, it should be added, that this reality is something that leaders in the middle east absolutely and constantly manipulate to secure their own power. Indeed, this is manipulated by continuing the cycle of poverty, isolation, and misdirecting the anger towards some outside, "infidel" cause. That's why I think no one hates the Palestinians more than the other Muslims of the area. Like Arafat, the people are being used and exploited.

They need peace, real peace, real answers of help and peace. But, often, they need to be stopped before the cycle continues even more so they can be the kind of people who listen and recognize peace when it is offered.

Hasan isolated himself, was isolated, was likely ridiculed--though less for his faith than for his own personality, which he couldn't accept and so made it, to himself, sound like it was about his supposed religion.

That this isn't inherent to the religion itself is probably best illustrated by Malcolm X, who I think became less militant the more actually devout he became later in life (though my knowledge of Malcolm X is fairly limited to Spike Lee's treatment, so I might be entirely wrong).

The American frontier tradition of Neighborliness has always been expected here. That developed from isolation of settlers homes in an area still periodically being raided by hunting parties of savages seeking to murder the men and steal the women and children. The French and Indian war and subsequent Indian Nation attacks from 1753 to 1770 required this tradition which lasted for another 150 years. The caveat to this practice presumed using common sense enemy identification skills (See, Ft Pillow Massacre). Being neighborly to the advance scouts of a war party was never demanded of American settlers like we have now demanded that all Americans welcome all newcomers into the all powerful USA after WWII, naively expecting ever newcomer will want to convert to our values. But the Islamic Koranic education, spread by billions of Saudi petro-dollars, and their practice of a 5 times daily of community worship chant to a supernatural god who tells them go to war against us and kill us requires that we go back and reinstating the original caveat to the American neighborliness tradition, even if the Saudi money dries up. I for one don't want to remain a slow cooking frog in Islam's hot water any longer.

No matter how you frame this debate, the issue always comes back to Islam. Once again we see a Muslim doing what the Quran teaches (9:111).

Once again we see many people in the West making excuses for actions done by Muslims in the name of their god. We see false comparisons to other vile actions in which there is no record of the murderer yelling "Jesus saves" "Via Buddha" "This is for Joseph Smith" or whatever.

People may have good intentions in defending "moderate" Muslims from backlash and intolerance but these same intentions ("only a few bad guys that misinterpret Islam") are the ones that allow the hate and violence to thrive.

Until Muslims understand that Islam has a problem, nothing will change. Muslims need to ask themselves why hate and violence come so easy to Muslims. Muslims need to take a long hard look at the teachings of the Quran and the life of the man after whose name they say "Praise be unto him". Muslims need to be told that aspects of their faith and many of their daily practices, especially in Islamic countries" are vile and unacceptable. In case you don't know I am referring to the institutionalized discrimination and persecution of non-Muslims, women, jews and gays in Muslims countries. Our leaders give Muslims a pass on this as if it were not relevant. Why should we think that Muslims in the West are any different from those in Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, malaysia, Lybia, etc....?

Bad times are coming. I blame Islam and people in the West that refuse to be honest about these things.

Studies have repeatedly shown that, although psychiatrists are typically very good at prescribing the appropriate meds to treat a given condition, they are actually VERY POOR at making a proper diagnosis in the FIRST PLACE.

Making a diagnosis and psychotherapy are different things, but I’ll leave that aside for now. Hospitals may have psychologist and psychiatrists and social workers for that matter working together to do different things. Medical personnel in general get ongoing training and if they do therapy they are probably getting ongoing training in that. You can’t say what someone’s total training is just from their degree or what they are and are not good at.

I’m not really sure how all of this is relevant, though. The guy didn’t kill people because he’s a psychiatrist.

Until Muslims understand that Islam has a problem, nothing will change.

I think this is true. If we don't hear people saying "Jesus saves" anymore it's because there's a very long line of theological self-critique.

I'm reading some 17th century American history these days. Quakers and baptists and such. They argue that no one should be persecuted or attacked because of their religious choices. They argued this because the well meaning, often very religious, Puritans were whipping, hanging, beating, etc. Quakers and Baptists all in the name of Jesus.

That there needs to be an inner change makes the PC stuff that much more pernicious. If we can blame others, we never face ourselves. Christianity teaches the "turn the other cheek" and related teachings precisely as a way of focusing on the direct problem--an internal dysfunction that is expressed so often outwardly wrong. But, for good chunks of history even Christians didn't get this.

Muslims, the kind we are told about, have to face up to the fact that even if it is "a religion of peace" as we are often told, there are significant elements that hate peace that can be co-opted by the depressed and rage-filled. If this becomes a defining reality then the answer isn't simply for those outside to be educated. It's a sign there's something rotten within that needs to be cut out by those who are within, if there's any real peace to be found.

Gawd, Freder! If there is one subject you really need to stay away from besides your love of enemy combatants and their rights...it is in the area of technology, where you own the subcategories of complete idiocy by a single Althouse commentor on the subjects of thermodynamics, energy economics, and basic engineering/physics most 12 year olds understand.

Defense in depth is the only way to deal with a suicide bomber/shooter in the short term. We need more firearms carry on military bases!!!

As I mentioned before, there is almost no firearms carry on Fort Hood, other than by police.

J.N. Heath said...

I'm puzzled as to why the MSM has compared this to other shootings but not (to my notice) the horrific Luby's shooting in nearby Killeen, TX.

Several of the customers in the Killen Luby's had firearms in their cars, since at that time there was no legal concealed carry in Texas, just as there is no legal non-police concealed carry on Fort Hood today.

As direct result of the murders in the Killeen Luby's Texas implemented a concealed carry permit process.

We need to look very seriously at allowing concealed carry by non-police military members on U.S. bases.

Nazism was and is an enemy.Communism was and is an enemy.Islam was and is an enemy.

Any peaceful, "moderate" muslim is a sleeper or an apostate.

An -ism cannot be arrested or warred upon, only individuals or countries can be coerced into peacefulness. If we don't want to go to war against every muslim, and we shouldn't want to, then we should implement some kind of containment policy. We need a Cold War against islam.

"I'm going to remember that pledge. And it is long past time for the President to step up and commit to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Enough with the demonstrations of thoughtful deliberation and concerned facial expressions made while saluting a flag-draped coffin. It is important for Obama to demonstrate leadership in war today."

I know I am late to the issue - however... I have long refuted the meme that Islam and a free democratic society are incompatible. Truly moderate (no Sharia) Muslims - some of whom are my clients and acquaintences - make that very clear. Visit Dr. Zuhdi Jasser - an outstanding gentleman - at www.aifdemocracy.org - or www.muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com. Having said that - truly moderate Muslims will tell you that a widely held version of Islam is the problem - is the enemy. One of my clients has told me that he will no longer attend the mosque his family had frequented. Saudi money funded a building project - Wahabi literature and hateful rhetoric followed. CAIR, the MSA and the MSNA - these are groups whose views are the antithesis of a free, secular society. We do a disservice to the moderate Muslim community if we do not speak out against the fundamentalists without fear that our enemy might cry bigotry.

I think that part of psychiatric training involves subjecting the would-be psychiatrist to psychological analysis. Why did this man slip through the system?

It seems that most of his problems began well after he entered the profession, so early screening may not have been effective. Just as your health can change with age, so can your mental health.

Besides, psychological analysis is a terribly imprecise "science" and many of the practitioners will disagree with each other on diagnoses. Think how easy it would be for someone who knew the system to avoid detection if he knew the answers that would trigger employment and professional consequences.

Heck, just think of how many psychiatric prisoners are released as rehabilitated and yet offend again. If you know the psychiatric system, you can game it unless you're really, really far gone.

Off the subject a bit about Major Delusion , but relative to the energy discussion - the price of oil from the middle east costs around $4 a BBL to produce currently versus $80-100 for alternate processes (such as tar sands in Canada to break even). The biggest deposits we have in the US are the shale areas in the upper midwest, and they would cost well over $100/ BBL to produce. All I am trying to say here is that to gain energy independence you are looking at a 50-100% premium over the current price of oil.

So just simple economics says that unless you are willing to take the hit, you will always gravitate to the areas in the middle east where oil can be extracted cheaply. I know, I work there.

And the war is with Deobandi or Salafist Islam - if we could figure out how to convert them to being in the Sufi school, then a lot of this tension would go away. (But this would be about as likely as trying to convert Jehovah's Witnesses to Episcopalians)

It wouldn't be the end of the world for our Army posts to have a couple of armed Unit Police in each major building. Or require E-7s and up to wear sidearms.

And perhaps mandatory screening of some kind. Really, that won't help too much. People clearly knew this guy was a horrible traitor, and did nothing out of fear of being called racist.

All that whining Nidal's family has been giving us about how this man was racially harassed? That's very unlikely, given his rank and our army, but what is likely is that Nidal changed the story quite a bit when he was given forceful arguments against his view of support for Islamist horrors.

David said "Since 9/11 there have been very few Jihad style attacks in the United States".

this is untrue. There have been hundreds or thousands, and Bush and Obama's government agencies were able to stop them by being rigorous and a bit lucky.

the attacks were simply failures, not nonexistent. What's interesting to me is that the government already had an eye on this guy. They could have stopped this. I don't blame Obama... this shit happens in a tough world. But we need to make sure we adapt and recognize that we need to keep on fighting these constant attacks.

"Even after the Fort Hood incident polite society may still be sort of sending the message “it’s OK” by dancing around the jihad issue. This disincentivizes the Muslims who hate what Hasan did by making them invisible men. Society has built a kind of closet for peaceable Muslims to go an hide in. If any of them wanted to come out and call Hasan an SOB they’d be like little kids looking around them in a haunted wood surrounded by thousands of glowing wolf eyes."

edutcher,

"but Islam has never undergone the kind of ... reformation other religions have."

There are those who make this claim, and other who assert that Islam indeed has undergone a reformation and wahhabism is it. Me, I don't know which position is more nearly correct.

John Burgess,

You know way more about the overall mileiu here than most of us, granted. But doesn't "He had major conflicts between his religious duty and his military duty" tend to strongly favor the point that it is a problem with Islam?

capsela said... I'm in the military and the only courage that exists there is in the junior enlisted ranks. The leadership is full of cowards, the promotion system rewards cowardice.

11/6/09 1:39 PM

EVERYONE enlists these days, capsela. Didn't you?

And you know what buddy, (or buddee) you might need to get out as fast as you can before my volunteer, enlisted, leadership, brave, smart, competant, tough, officer son (or his best friend) finds you and whups your ass. Big time.

Lt. Gen. Cone[head] is the base and corps COMMANDER - not a frigging "spokesman" - though you would not know that if you watched cable news last night.

So people made offhand comments? This guy was praising suicide bombing the defense of the Ummaah to members of the military. I think he used his very outspokenness as a sort of camouflage cloak, since no one would believe that an actual infiltrator would be so stupid as to be so outspoken. Clearly they should have punted his ass years ago, and then garnished his wages to pay back the Army for his medical training.

Anyway, how much "teasing" does a major have to endure? He's a staff-grade officer for crissake, not some put-upon PFC.

One-off attacks like this may not be ordered from Preshawar, but you can be certain that they are inspired, at least in part, by Al Jazeera and web sites affiliated with Al Quaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

If there were rigorous equality in the Army, this man would have been arrested or at least discharged years before. He had been making lunatic statements (see NPR) and preaching to returning soldiers for years. As Ralph Peters said, no one wanted to risk their career to discipline him.

It is now SOP for bureaucracies to give more "equality" to certain groups than others. What do you think would have happened if he were making anti-black statements and lecturing about beheading all the racial inferiors?

Please, the questions Obama is handwringing about have very simple answers. We are all equal and held to account equally or we are not. A beer summit will not solve this one.

So apparently this poor guy snapped because the Army is overstreched from fighting Bush's illegal wars. The guy's religion had nothing to do with it, he was a typical stressed-out GI and you can ignore all the Allah Akbar! yelling and the bulletin board posts that praised suicide bombers.

The only lesson to take away from this is that Bush's illegal wars must be ended ASAP.

Fort Hood is, I believe, named after John Hood, a graduate of West Point and an officer in the Unites States Army.

An officer who refused to fight those who had declared war against the United States. He resigned his commission, became an officer in the Confederate army and proceeded to be directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of American soldiers. He wasn't alone. This thing was pretty common in the early 1860s.

Fortunately, Muslims overall tend to be significantly more restrained than those Southern gentleman.

Here is an idea based on the fellow who said that the moderate muslims need to clean out the fundamentalist rot in their midst.

I say to them: Root them out. Root them out now. The very next time there is a crazy muslim who kills his wife/daughter in an honor killing, a mass-shooting or even conspires to plan a jihad-type plot, 100 Imams are deported on an entirely random basis. If there is a demonstration by muslims where "Death to America" signs are shown, police surround the demonstrators and arrest all of them and immediately(within 12 hours, no lawyers and no appeals) deport them. After the first few forced deportations, the moderates will get the message that America is SECULAR. To be fair, we could do the same thing with Mexicans, Sikhs and any other non naturally born people. Naturalized citizens who get too uppity can have their citizenship revoked and deported too.

Sounds harsh, but I think it would be very effective. I don't recall any violence at the big Tea parties this year. I only saw punks rioting at the G20 in Pittsburgh or where ever it was. Zero tolerance for immigrants until they know how to behave in a civilized, secular and peaceful society.

Any felony offense should be treated the same way, immediate deportation.

Not to quibble with the basic point about evil and the human heart and whatnot, but the "Liberation Tigers" attacked Buddhists, and the Boxers were not especially religious (perhaps not Buddhist at all).

I don't believe Buddhism has ever commanded armies in the way Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism have.

I think the subway gas attacks of the '90s were by some group claiming to be Buddhist, though, so they have that going for them.

Hasan has definitely been listening to somebody preaching sedition. We're being way too accommodating toward imams preaching jihad, and the hate-filled rhetoric of the left. They've managed to create the idea that America is to blame for problems that it has no hand it causing.

My main concern is that nobody in that building was armed. How stupid have we become when the ARMY created gun-free zones on its bases? They had to wait for an MP to get a call and get there to stop this creep in a hall full of trained soldiers, while he shot 43 people unable to even defend themselves! There should be a requirement that there be some armed personnel in every room on base.

"Isn't a pity they just happen to control more than a quarter of the world's supply of oil and none of you assholes are willing to make the least sacrifice to reduce this country's dependence on oil."

Pardon me, you overly-emotionally-invested pustular lesion, but last I checked, "you assholes" are unwilling to make the least allowance for exploration and exploitation of this country's vast untapped petroleum resources.

"They've managed to create the idea that America is to blame for problems that it has no hand it causing."

- I think you were listening to Obama's Cairo speech

Oh, and Alberta Tar Sands production generally runs under $40/barrel, and I don't see oil going below that any time soon. Some of the more marginal projects cost more, but are still profitable at today's prices.

Off the subject a bit about Major Delusion , but relative to the energy discussion - the price of oil from the middle east costs around $4 a BBL to produce currently versus $80-100 for alternate processes (such as tar sands in Canada to break even).

So true. Except a price of under $50 a bbl would break the Saudis. The Iranians need over $70 a bbl and maybe as much as $90.

So many comments here, but sorry I'm going to skip right on down to the end and post my own. I did read about a third.

Here's my thing - isn't there a good enough chance that he would have done something like this regardless of whether he was in the army or not? If the answer is no, then - going the other way - would that not lend credence to the idea that he did indeed snap?

My own feeling is that yes, he probably would have gone on a horrific rampage anyway.

And yes, as someone else pointed out, what do we do about other similar personalities in the military? It's tricky. But I'm sorry to blame this all on lefty thinking when the military is practically 80% republican is a stretch for me. It is.

MAJ Hasan was a doctor. As a general rule doctors and nurses are what's called "rear echelon." Usually they're in an entirely separate chain of command from "regular" troops.

How the hell did a rear esh guy of any rank get his hands on a weapon on base?

Unless there's a good explanation, he probably had help, and chose the 9 as being more easily concealed.

He is one of a growing line of Muslims involved in "random" shootings, many of them targetting military personnel. That's not counting the ones we've stopped, such as Jacksonville and Ft. Dix.

Before these fuckwads get too far along in what will rapidly become a Cowboys and Muzzies relationship if they pull too many more of these things ... they might wish to ask the Comanches and Sioux how that worked out for them the last time.

I think that in addition to standard double-checks on references would be good enough.

===

Right. Was it political correctness that prevented this? Or was it a nod toward careerism? Who wants to be the one to knock someone off their perch after reaching a certain height? How many OTHERS did the military catch?

-Why was it so easy for one disgruntled man to gun down 41 soldiers on a military base?

Not even Neo in the Matrix was that good. And this guy was a psychiatrist. Our policy of not allowing soldiers to carry on military bases is pretty clearly not working.

The answer is:

My main concern is that nobody in that building was armed. How stupid have we become when the ARMY created gun-free zones on its bases? They had to wait for an MP to get a call and get there to stop this creep in a hall full of trained soldiers, while he shot 43 people unable to even defend themselves! There should be a requirement that there be some armed personnel in every room on base.

And then:

MAJ Hasan was a doctor. As a general rule doctors and nurses are what's called "rear echelon." Usually they're in an entirely separate chain of command from "regular" troops.

How the hell did a rear esh guy of any rank get his hands on a weapon on base?

Unless there's a good explanation, he probably had help, and chose the 9 as being more easily concealed.

My guess is that is what we are going to see. The terrorist snuck a couple of hand guns onto the base (illegally, of course). And that is likely not that hard, since the guards at the gate likely don't search most of the vehicles entering or leaving the base (and, likely even less likely for him, due to his rank).

The base may be the largest no-concealed carry area and "gun-free" zone in Texas. Guns are limited to MPs and soldiers training with their weapons. And, apparently, they typically don't have any ammo off the range.

I think it was a Luby's cafeteria in Texas awhile back, where someone started to shoot it up, and patrons shot him with their (previously) concealed hand guns. That is more typical of Texas than the situation at the base.

My main concern is that nobody in that building was armed. How stupid have we become when the ARMY created gun-free zones on its bases? They had to wait for an MP to get a call and get there to stop this creep in a hall full of trained soldiers, while he shot 43 people unable to even defend themselves!

Actually, it wasn't the MPs who stopped him, but rather, a female civilian cop, who got wounded apparently three times in a shootout with the domestic terrorist.

I mean, when Tim McV bombed the Fed building in OK, the PC Police, OOPS. make that all The Right-Thinking People, blamed Talk Radio in general & Rush in particular for stirring up the hatred of the fundamentalist extremists who did that.

Hate TV: MSNBC.

And look, Prof A, you’re old enough to remember the child’s game: The Major was really crying out “Olly, Olly, Ox, I'm Free!", not "Allahu Akbar". C’mon.

For that matter, Prof A, I blame you for stirring up the rightwing hatred of your commenters here. The Major is the victim as are all Muslims. I mean look at what The Flying Imams went through. After all, as noted, it’s the 99% of Muslims who are giving the other 1%a bad name.

In fact, The Hon Janet N. has asked us to watch out for people who would incite others to do bad things like Tim & so I had to forward this blog of yours to her as a possible example. We must all do our part. We can’t just rely on Keith & The Daily Kos. They let us down last Tuesday, you know.

V. D. Hanson: “While there is sometimes talk of backlash and anti-Muslim hysteria since 9/11, I don’t think the number of Muslims attacked or killed is comparable to the number of non-Muslims killed by Muslims who evoked Islam in some way as a catalyst for their angers. Nor do we see comparable serial Christian, Hindu, or Jewish-inspired attacks either against mosques and Muslims or the policies of the United States government, either by single actors or more active and organized plotters.”http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/fort-hood%E2%80%94a-now-familiar-tragedy/>link

MAJ Hasan was a doctor. As a general rule doctors and nurses are what's called "rear echelon." Usually they're in an entirely separate chain of command from "regular" troops.

How the hell did a rear esh guy of any rank get his hands on a weapon on base?

Unless there's a good explanation, he probably had help, and chose the 9 as being more easily concealed.

My guess is that is what we are going to see. The terrorist snuck a couple of hand guns onto the base (illegally, of course). And that is likely not that hard, since the guards at the gate likely don't search most of the vehicles entering or leaving the base (and, likely even less likely for him, due to his rank).

That was my first thought. I know it's 40+ years ago for me in the Army or reserves, but very few Army people had guns in the rear esh & even fewer had ammo.

Without making this a grand conspiracy, he had to have some help to get a weapon like that & ammo.

And, moreover,the guy was a screw up as a doc. Who'd give him a weapon & ammo?

If you want "In Depth", allow me, a Christian living in an Islamic country to do just that:

Islam is a religion that breeds hatred and bigotry.

It is a religion which practices "exclusion", meaning, non-Muslims are treated as sub-humans.

In their so-called "holy" book, passages that encourage violence against non-Muslims are everywhere, and that is not all.

In their "Hadith", calls for the extremination of non-Muslims are not that uncommon either !

I watch in horror what happened in Fort Hood, because the 13 soldiers who died, died for the IGNORANCE of the Western Christianity !

The Muslims have destroyed the World Trade Center of NYC, killing more than 3000 innocent people, and yet, America is still dreaming.

And in 2004, in Beslan, south of Soviet Union, hundreds of innocent CHILDREN were killed, again by Muslims, and again, America's Christians, especially those so-called liberal-minded intellectuals, still refuse to believe that Islam is a violent religion.

Now, 13 soldiers lost their lives.

Tomorrow, the next day, the next week, next year... how many more Americans must DIE in the hands of the violent Muslims?

How many more Americans must die before America wakes up to the cruel fact that Islam = Violence?

"Excuses for Communism, Islam, National Socialism are like assholes. In fact, the excuse makers are the asshole Nazis"

Very interesting assertion by Cedarford, considering that C-fudd has vociferously supported Pat Buchanan's crackpot contention that Poland started WWII. What more outrageous excuse for the Nazis could there be? Sane and moral people understand this is like blaming Megan's Law on Megan, but it is hardly surprising, especially in view of C-fudd's hysterical defense of Polanski, that he (and Buchanan) take their ethical cues from NAMBLA.

So going forward we can refer to Cedarford with confidence, honesty and accuracy as "that self-acknowledged asshole C-fudd".

"C4 ... [w]ould it be quite impossible for you to strip your posts of the repetitive cliche that generally infests them?"

You are more likely to see the sun rising in the West. C-fudd is the classic sweaty, compulsive antisemite with less self-control than a junkie crawling through the gutter for a fix of cheap heroin. Like all antisemites, he is a nitwit, misfuck, and born loser who can't own up to his own shortcomings and failures so he blames everything on da Jooooos.

However, as someone who works in health care regulation, it certainly seems to me that psychiatrists are some of the least mentally stable of professionals.

I've had to discipline (revoke, suspend, or place on probation) the licenses of at least 3 psychiatrists in the last 9 months for the sorts of things you expect only from the most disturbed of individuals-- firing a gun at another car (which carried children) in a road rage incident; having a sexual relationship w/ the 13 year old child of a patient; or having sex with multiple psychiatric patients.

I think it's less of an issue about the military and more an issue of psychiatric training (and weeding out).

Hasan's aunt Noel blamed America for his attack on the U.S. He was ragged about his "religion". WHat is he? A child? He can't bear being teased? He's never heard of trash talk? He's never participated in it? Is he a mouse or a man?

The aunt's comment not only blames America, it's a two-fer: it also absolves Islam and the Koran. Hasan has been proselytizing, unsuccessfully. He knew he wouldn't be on the battlefield, so killing Muslims wouldn't have been an issue. He just didn't want non-Muslims killing Muslims!

Under Islam, Muslims are allowed to kill anybody who doesn't accept Islam. Meanwhile, the resisters are not supposed to fight back; they must eat bullets and be sufficiently terrorized to submit to Islam so that Muslims won't kill them anymore.

The Koran tells them to kill away; they will gain paradise for themselves and their loved ones; they will get 72 fine raisins (the morons think they'll get virgins), and lots of pretty boys with skin like pearls. The women? They get screwed again. They get to relive the nightmare of unending virginity yielding unpleasurably before the brutish rutting of self-centered males.

That's the other thing Noel's comment tells us, and this is borne out by how Islamic men treat women. Islamic men are incapable of controlling themselves. Their actions are always someone else's fault. The woman didn't wear a bedsheet covering her from head to foot. Her ankle was visible. She left the house without a male companion. After 9/11, other guys in the military ragged on him cuz he's a Muslim. He wanted to leave but Uncle Sam wouldn't let him even though he offered to pay back the money. Uh huh.

Whether or not he'd been ragged or Uncle Sam refused to discharge him, this guy would've wound up killing lots of people who had rejected his ideology. The proof? His postings on various websites and the comments/speeches he made in public. None of it supported America. All of it supported Muslims slaughtering resisters of Islam.

In the uniformed military services the initial enlistment is for a period of eight years. The first four are active, and the next four are reserve unless extended. This is followed by enlistments of four years each although the first reenlistment cancels the reserve time. The paygrades covered by this regimen are Enlisted-1 through E-9.

An officer is commissioned with an initial obligation of eight years (I believe, please correct me if I'm wrong.) After the initial obligation the officer is free to submit his or her resignation for release at any time. In the case of the Major his resignation was refused due to the financial investment that the Army had to date. The weapons were his personal weapons, legally purchased in advance of his actions. He was probably in receipt of a sidearm but it would be locked up in the armory till his transfer to Afghanistan. at which time he would turn it in and be assigned a new weapon in theater.

You know, Allahu Akbar isn't just a call to jihad. It's a phrase with multiple meanings depending on context.

In this case, the meaning was "God help me!"

No, John, it doesn't have multiple meanings. It translates to "God is great!" and it is what almost every terrorist shouts before killing his victims. I know you are trying to go for the nuanced intelligent thing here but you are wrong. First of all, drop the "u" on Allah. It is a short vowel in the Arabic and not necessary, you do pronounce it slightly, but adding it in your translation only shows you really don't know what you are taling about. Allah - God, 3rd person singular noun = subject of the phrase. Akbar = great, large, big; an adjective. Without a verb, "is" is understood. Thats it, no verb meaning "help"; there is nothing to indicate any other meaning other than "God is great".

While John Burgess goes way too far in suggesting he has some special insight into Hasan's motivation, he has a lot better idea about what translation involves than you do. While a literal gloss, morphome by morpheme, might be useful for some kinds of study, it's a terrible way to try to convey the meaning and significance from one language into another.

It suggests jihad. Terrorism and jihad are not synonyms. Terrorism is a means. Jihad is an end.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

This is incorrect. Jihad is an act or action. It is a "struggle" towards pleasing or aligning with Allah's wishes. It ranges from a "struggle" with oneself to a "struggle", or war, with non-believers. The radical jihadists use terrorism in that war, and the goal is to eliminate those who would stand in the way of claiming the world for Allah. Those Muslims who do not use war to do this attempt to do it through conversion of non-believers, but it this is not possible, Islam says that violence is acceptable and necessary as a means to the end.